Anxiety can stall accomplishment
Anxiety can impair sleep.
Anxiety can ruin relationships.
Anxiety can hinder progress.
Anxiety can fuel accomplishment—Wait. What?!?
The Many Forms of Anxiety
I had no idea that I had been living under a veil of anxiety until about two years ago. When I came to identify the condition and the various ways it can mainfest, I attempted to problem solve my way through the condition. Little did I know that all that “problem solving” was only fueling the very thing I wished to overcome.
Anxiety can take many forms. The media has had a heyday with buzz words, such as “burnout,” “functional anxiety,” and “free-floating anxiety.” As discussed in a previous blog about anxiety, these “forms of anxiety” are not recognized by the DSM.
Oddly enough, these terms actually helped me recognize patterns in my anxiety—it was all related to drive, performance and reassurance from outside sources—a desperate need to be perfect and live up to the expectations of others.
What a terrible way to live.
As I began to unravel my anxiety—the genesis of this project—I realized that although my anxiety led me to achieve many tasks every day, it also held me back from larger accomplishments, destroyed relationships, offset effective communication, and hindered my sleep.
Today, as I write this blog, I am not anxiety-free. However, on the days when I manage my mindset and stay in control of my body (versus my body controlling my mind), I can halt my anxiety. When I don’t ruminate over a past I cannot change, when I recognize that there are only so many hours in a day and I can’t control everything, I feel free and at peace. And guess what? On those days, I sleep. In fact, I sleep really, really well.
Real Talk about Anxiety
Across what seems like hundreds of conversations, I have discovered that few people really talk about what anxiety is doing to their lives. Instead, many wear it like a badge of honor—talking about performance, control, or a color-coded, alphabetized, highly-structured and organized life. Sounds glamourous, doesn’t it?
That was how my anxiety reared its head. It is exhausting and always reaching a boiling point that not everyone sees.
I have spoken with women who are paralyzed by their anxiety—they can’t leave the house for fear of encountering people or are incapable of making any decisions. Unable to admit that this very condition is at the epicenter of their crisis, the anxiety continues to hold them back from everything they want to do and who they really are.
Others experience manic episodes that are barely perceptible to the individual experiencing it but to everyone around her, she is on edge, and her friends, family, or colleagues are propping her up and enduring their own anxiety in an effort to quell hers.
Anxiety manifests differently in different people in different situations.
Anxiety may have made me a hyper organized individual, but most of my relationships at home were tense. The biggest wake up call for me were the signs of anxiety manifesting in my young daughter—she was imitating me. I struggled to communicate effectively with colleagues. I never slept. I felt hot and tense and angry all the time.
While all those things are horrible to live with, they can also lead to manifestation of chronic disease. Countless articles link stress and anxiety to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia—just to name a few. This significant and growing body of research suggests that many health conditions are related to the continuous and unnecessary stimulation of the fight or flight response within the body. Turning on these responses repeatedly when you are not being chased by a saber-toothed tiger is dangerous. Many auto-immune conditions have been associated with stress load and anxiety.
Anxiety is an epidemic. The fight or flight response designed for cave man life is continuously stimulated because of the pressures to curate your life for Instagram, answer emails and calls 24/7 for your boss, bake cookies for the bake sale, host the best dinner parties, and do it all in Lululemon pants with not a hair out of place.
What to do About Anxiety*
If you believe (as I once did) that your color-coded world makes you a superior being and fuels your “successful” life or if anxiety keeps you closed off from people and dreams or if your anxiety has made you sick (memory problems, auto-immune disorders, addictions. . . just to name a few), it is time to take a step back and examine your mind.
- Do you lay awake at night worried about work, family, kids, a clean house, etc.?
- Do you toss and turn running through an endless list of to-dos?
- Do you get hot or tingly or clench your jaw when confronted by an uncomfortable conversation or situation?
- Does your heart race when you are in a situation you can’t seem to control?
- Does your stomach ache with worry?
- Do you routinely stop in a colleague’s office to immediately vent about what happened in the last meeting or tense email exchange?
These are all signs of anxiety at work in your body. They are also all signs that your body is controlling your mind instead of your mind controlling your body.
You might be asking at this point, what is all this talk about mind control versus body control?
Step One: Put Your Mind in Charge
If any of these scenarios resonate with you or you struggle with other states that impact your cognition so significantly, it is time to take back control.
You see that flight or fight response that I mentioned is what you call “autonomic.” It is a mechanism designed to turn on automatically when there is danger and bring hyper focus to a situation or task that will quite literally save your life (like running from a saber tooth tiger).
As society has evolved, this response system has become incessantly triggered by situations that are not life-threatening and since there is no threat, only a perceived threat (i.e., if I leave the house, people are judging me or if I speak publicly people will laugh at me, or if I share my idea in the this meeting, my colleagues will hate it and my boss will fire me—just to name a few) the system never turns off. In turn, you are hyped up and charged up for a fight or flight all the time.
When you let your body turn on this system in response to these false dangers, it begins to change how you look, how you act, and how you feel. It also charges up other around you. These alterations can lead to disease, fatigue, depression, and advanced aging.
To stop it, you must start examining the situations that cause the reaction:
- Will your boss really fire you if he hates your idea?
- Will people really laugh at you if you go on stage to speak at an event?
- Will people really judge you if you leave the house in sweats and no makeup?
- Will your friends unfriend you if you serve basic tacos at your next dinner party?
- Will you lose followers if your sheet closet isn’t color coded and labeled?
- Will people ignore you if you’re not wearing the newest leggings from Alo?
The answer is no. And, if you answered yes, to any of these questions, then you need a new job or new friends, or a different mindset (or all of the above—more on that later).
Step Two: Change THE STORYLINE
After you start recognizing the scenarios that cause the reaction, the next step is checking your thoughts:
- After you share your idea at the meeting, do you ruminate about how the conversation should have gone?
- When you fight with your spouse, do you spew vicious thoughts about if he did this then everything would be fine?
- When a colleague assesses your project, do you lie awake at night picking apart her critique?
Rumination breeds anxiety. You can’t change the past—so why are you thinking about it? It’s a waste of time, brain space, and energy. And, if you are “practicing” for your next encounter with that person, stop the revenge talk. Instead reframe or rehearse for the best case scenario in your next conversation.
Consider this, what if you and a colleague have a disagreement about a project. The colleague left off important details in the original request and now that the project is almost done, her boss—the real stakeholder of the project—completely revises everything.
Time for a meeting.
You’re angry because now you and your team must work overtime to get the project done on time—it was last minute request in the first place. You’re also frustrated because this is the second time she has approved something that the boss was not bought in on.
Now, you could visualize various scenarios in your head about how you finally tell the boss about his lacking management style and the team member’s inability to observe details or glean information. You can imagine tense word exchange.
Or…
What if you approach the scenario with compassion? That boss needs help managing his new team members—he is busy and you know he can be intimidating initially. What if you suggested a plan that would help all of you stay on the same page until the new employee feels more comfortable? And, what I you reached out to her separately to help understand how to navigate her new environment and the people in it?
This “mental rehearsal” can apply to all sorts of situations: holidays with the in-laws, your first day on the job, and more. When you rehearse the details and collaborating on solutions in a positive framework, your anxiety goes away and you have a great outcome.
Step Three: Practice, Practice, Practice
Now comes the hard part: put it into practice. Your body wants to be in charge. Plus, doing what you have always done is easy so that is what will feel best. Master your mind.
You must mentally stop the negative thoughts.
You must mentally stop ruminating over the past.
You must mentally rehearse positive interactions.
You must practice compassion for the other person in any scenario.
These steps will help you live in the present while imagining the best possible future.
You see, as Seth Godin says, “Anxiety is just practicing failure in advance.” Do you really want to spend most of your life rehearsing failure that has not happened?
SQUELCH ANXIETY
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DISCLAIMER
*NOTE: The Happy Life Agenda is not comprised of medical professionals. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease. It is also not intended to dismiss or undercut the anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions that are rooted in trauma and other life-threatening situations or conditions. Consult your healthcare professional before making any changes to your treatment plan.
